The Roadside Horse

Anyone who has driven the long road between Johannesburg and Cape Town knows how the hours start to blur together: the Karoo stretching out on both sides, and farm fences running alongside the car for kilometre after kilometre. On one of those drives I noticed a few horses standing right up against a barbed-wire fence at the side of the road. One of them had its head lowered over the wire, and that image stayed with me long after I had driven past.

I wanted this painting to feel close and personal, so I filled the page with the horse’s head and neck rather than showing the whole animal. The warm chestnut coat is built up in layers of burnt orange, rust and deep brown, while the mane falls across the eye in loose strokes of blue-grey and white. The barbed wire cuts across the lower part of the painting, a reminder of the line between the horse and the open road, and of how gentle these animals remain even behind a fence.

This painting took me three days to complete, and it is one of the most detailed pieces I have done.